Russian cannibal who ate mother has sentence reduced 'because he was hungry'

A Russian cannibal who killed and ate parts of his own mother has had his prison sentence reduced by nine months after a court accepted he resorted to cannibalism out of hunger rather than preference.

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

10:38AM GMT 11 Nov 2009

Sergei Gavrilov admitted he had used parts of his murdered mother's legs to make soup and pasta for weeks on end. But he argued he was driven to the desperate act because he had ran out of money and was starving.

"I did not like the flesh," he told investigators. "It was too fatty."

A court in southern Russia accepted his explanation and ruled that the unemployed 27 year-old had therefore not wantonly defiled his mother's own corpse. It did find him guilty of murder, however, and sentenced him to fourteen years and three months in prison, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

That is nine months less than the standard 15-year sentence for such a crime. Mr Gavrilov got off more lightly because of his confession and because the judge believed he had turned to cannibalism out of hunger rather than preference.

Mr Gavrilov said he had killed his 55 year-old mother Lyubov last January after she refused to hand over her pension. He wanted to spend the money on a drinking and gambling binge.

Angered by her refusal, he hit her on the head with a brick and strangled her with an electric cord before dumping her lifeless body on the balcony.

It was only two weeks later after he had spent all her money that he discovered that her body had frozen on the balcony and decided to begin slicing bits of flesh from her legs to keep his hunger pangs at bay.